Macross II

Nothing happens to the camera man lmao

I wish he had a little more spunk. JUST A LITTLE MORE! This really wasn't that bad an anime honestly, if a little milquetoast if anything. I mean after he gets arrested, he loses most of his agency and kinda just got ferried around by Silvie. Like actually he's supposed to be a reporter, but when he's in Silvie's ship he's kinda just in the back seat spacing out instead of acting like a hyper active reporter type the show wanted him to be in the beginning. Okay maybe not hyper active, but energetic at least. He says he wants to act, and shoots all these videos and is even annoying about it, but it's not really something he does at the BEST MOMENTS!! I swear, I keep running into these shows that just hold themselves back, and for what! They had the budget for sakuga and numerous pretty faces, did the directors get drunk and lazy or something? Did they forget the characterization part of the fiction? Check out the last episode of bubblegum crisis to see what i mean.. Lisa Vanette is so well animated, and you can see her curiosity bursting through the way she moves about the world she's in. You can see this to an even more intense extreme in the Crusher Joe flick from 1983. Let your wings fly! Especially those of your leading man. Even if you didn't want him to be the main character in the end, he felt a little lobotomized and he didn't deserve that.

Anyways Silvie is a cool character who had a lot of awsome development, which I thought was quite cool. My beloved neo-rangesque glowy tatoo aesthetic is here too and quite welcome. Really though, why was everybody so glossy? Was that just AIC's style back then? Half the characters looked like they got dipped in krispy kreme dougnut sauce before being put on the set in some scenes.

Also what's the deal with half dubbing anime. Big anime needs to stop doing that to these 35 year old anime I keep watching. It's quite rude.

• i really did like the idea that the zentradi were being controlled by a different space faring race with an evil culture controlled by music
• that ear translator... i must have it
• other than the boring character animation, the other animation was fantastic (as expected of AIC)
• the romantic plot almost mirrors that of the SDF in a way, and i see it was intentional. Except, I do think the characters were just more fun to watch in the original. OG macross is just.. really funny in the beginning! It's the one thing that make the first few episodes incredibly entertaining and timeless, the humor and banter is a huge part of the characterization, and that doesn't happen as much in macross 2. It happens a BIT but nobody's really excited about anything in this show, especially after the first part where they rescued the Ishtar. People are either a lil pissed off, depressed, mad,at peace or thankful.
• everyone is so yassified in this anime and it's honestly kinda jarring
• the military controlling information plot felt like a pretty natural evolution of the themes of the original macross. i mean music as a force to control and move people to action going into journalism and the govemnent producing propaganda and suppressing the press is basically the same thing, if not more literally. Pretty cool i'd say. I guess that's why I was so mad about the journalist character Hibiki. His friends had more spunk than he did!!! Like damn Hibiki!! Move your ass!! Snort some coke or something!!
• NGL somebody said this is kinda like megazone and I see the resemblence. It is similar!

Otherwise yeah watch macross . It's not as good a SDF or macross plus or anything, but it's a pretty good alternate timeline. It has some cute ideas.